Lead Confidential

Rapleaf logo

Years ago, I remember hearing about a company called RapLeaf and its desire to create the equivalent of the eBay Feedback Score, a universal quantification of one’s reputation. Look at the score and you would have an instant understanding of their person. Unlike eBay, whose Feedback Score relates only to their activity within the auction site, RapLeaf wanted to create a score that transcended any particular site. That meant gathering data across sites. Unfortunately, their plans for creating the repository for reputation didn’t catch on, but showing their roots as successful entrepreneurs, Auren Hoffman and company, did what Max Levchin did with Slide. He transformed the business into something else that works. Today, RapLeaf leverages their expertise in social media data aggregation to offer businesses a way to understand their customers better by having access to their social activity.

Calling today’s RapLeaf a startup version of Axciom or any number of data providers that if given some data can append it with additional is both accurate but selling short the uniqueness of RapLeaf’s data aggregation. I read a tweet recently that said, “2009: nearly 23% of Facebook users earn > $100,000/year; 16% for MySpace; 38% for LinkedIn.” The data came from a recent CNN Article titled, “Does your social class determine your online social network?” Regardless of one’s own personal feelings about the various social networks, as seen by this report, if you can know to which social networks a user belongs, you can glean some pretty insightful information that will help you make some potentially important business and marketing decisions. All a company needs in order to work with RapLeaf is a customer or potential customer’s email address. From there the process mirrors a more traditional data append service. As for what information, RapLeaf returns, here is a graphical representation instead of just a list.

So how are those in the online lead generation space using RapLeaf. To give you a hint of the potential power, a good friend of mine once joked that he would be more than happy if others didn’t learn about RapLeaf… and he meant it. An interesting example in my opinion comes from a not so obvious sector, those in payday loans. They use the RapLeaf data as a feedback loop. In other words, many in the space have found correlations between the quality of a lead, i.e., its likelihood for payback, and the social networks with which they belong. That correlation is probably not something we will see in a CNN article, though. A more traditional example comes from outside the world of online lead generation where an agency or brand will desire to segment its users based on their social activity. This way, they can create custom segments and invite users to dialog with the company outside of just email. They can write those with Facebook accounts to become fans of their Facebook page, which will lead to both higher activity from that segmented blast and lower costs (by not sending a Facebook message to non-Facebook users).

Not unlike other data providers, RapLeaf charges on a query volume basis, and companies can access the data by sending over files or in real-time through their API. Many in the online lead generation space have extensive familiarity using third party data providers and will wonder whether another source can really add value. Not addressing the lead scoring products but only data append, TARGUSinfo and eBureau have the largest share of market in the lead gen space (or so I believe) with Service Objects and Melissa Data being names mentioned frequently as well. The first two have products that focus on the robustness of primarily a phone or postal data whereas RapLeaf focuses on the robustness of an email address, and what you can learn by understanding not just email robustness but social strength – age, gender, and number of friends. Social networks, though, change very fast. LinkedIn today might imply a professional on the whole, but in two years, who knows. So, like any data set, making the most of it means continuously using it and not just a one time check or broad assumptions. Higher cost, but quality in leads to quality out.

RapLeaf is based in San Francisco, California.

About RapLeaf by RapLeaf:

“Rapleaf is the leader in online people information search. Rapleaf’s services help top retailers, political organizations, airlines, hotels, banks, insurance companies, and other leading firms gain consumer insight, plan online media, and manage fraud risk in real-time. Today, Rapleaf has processed over 1 billion transactions and is one the largest people databases in the world with insight into 300+ million consumers. “

When thinking about the online advertising world, Charles Dicken’s immortal opening line from A Tale of Two Cities frequently comes to mind. While most tend to remember “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” the next part of the same sentence applies equally well, namely “…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” That at least is how I tend to think of the ever-changing performance marketing landscape. A better line might be, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” Banner ads are flashier, online video a part of every day reality, and applications once possible only on the desktop are now available online, but human nature doesn’t change.

The New York Times, of all companies, was victim of classic human nature not too long ago. The newspaper’s online site was tricked into running ads for Vonage by a company that was not Vonage. Like any good scammer, they ran legitimate ads until no was looking, i.e. the weekend, at which time they switched from Vonage ads to phony virus-protection ads. According to reports, the new ads attempted to have users download supposed security software that ultimately bombarded users with ads until they paid for a piece of software that removed the newly installed virus. It’s an all too familiar scam that only highlights many of the vulnerabilities in the online ad ecosystem, especially in regards to display advertising. And if the NY Times is vulnerable, just imagine what lesser transgressions occur on a more regular basis. That is exactly what the New York based company PerformLine looks to make known so that advertisers and publishers don’t find themselves the unwitting victim in the often cat and mouse game of online monetization.

Founded almost two years ago by 12-year veteran of the online advertising space Alex Baydin, PerformLine has an ambitious goal-a goal that becomes more valuable with time, not less. In a world with only a handful of sites and ad placements, keeping track of what is running where is a relatively easy task. However, it is now virtually impossible to know where your ads run. And, despite assurances from networks about the quality of sites in their network, even they spend more time than they’d like battling rogue publishers putting their code on undesirable content. If PerformLine has its way, advertisers will rest assured and feel more in control. The PerformMatch platform focuses on providing transparency to the display process, giving advertisers a visible trail to follow and scoring sites based on their compliance to the terms set forth by the advertiser. PerformMatch is a campaign verification platform that looks to find and eliminate waste by acting as an independent third-party and automating the process so that it doesn’t become the unofficial job of the advertiser.

(Screenshot of PerformMatch interface. Click to enlarge.)

Bad behavior doesn’t confine itself to the display landscape, but this is the area with a lot of room for improvement. Display and email are the first two areas that PerformLine’s PerformMatch focuses on. As is the case with display, the company has proprietary technology allowing them to flag offending or potentially violating email creative so that advertisers can review it. Among other things, this allows advertisers to gain visibility into which subject lines and creative actually drive visitors to their pages. PerformMatch works for both advertisers and networks who want to make sure that traffic sources are compliant and not using troublesome ads or showing ads on compromising sites.

According to Alex Baydin, the company will begin with display and email, but the product road map has them creating similar optics into other major drivers of traffic, including search. In Baydin’s opinion, what is happening to the online marketing landscape today is no different than click fraud. It simply has another name-targeting fraud. Every time an advertiser’s message appears in a place or in context that it shouldn’t, that is fraud. Many companies have made click fraud known and offer ways to help advertisers, but far fewer, if any, are tackling the equally detrimental problem of targeting fraud. Ignorance can be bliss until your customers write you and tell you otherwise. Just ask the NY Times.